


Why "Visionary" Is Really, Really Inept

by LLitchi



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode Tag - Visionary, Gen, Meta, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 15:47:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLitchi/pseuds/LLitchi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I’m getting a vivid mental image of the show dressing up in Lolita black and cutting itself in the bathroom.</p>
<p>What I was desperately trying to get at here is I can’t believe the sheer level of self-sabotage in “Visionary.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why "Visionary" Is Really, Really Inept

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler for and up to Episode 8 of Season 3.

So I caught up with season 3 of Teen Wolf.

Thesis: “Visionary” is really, really inept.

Revised thesis, considering the fact that it’s Teen Wolf: “Visionary” is so inept that it makes all of season 3 look smart, like somebody (Jeff Davis) cobbled together a bunch of ideas and dumped it in the middle of the season hoping to wring some theme out of the chaos.

First of all, “Visionary” doesn’t belong in the context of season 3 of Teen Wolf. All seven episodes preceding it has been intent on serial storytelling: there’s the benefit of an ongoing mystery—the druid; a looming threat—the Alpha pack; and even a character through line as dumb and as tiresome as Scott’s Pinocchio normal boy complex (seriously though, lip service does not good character motivation make). “Visionary” also inherits from episode 7, “Currents,” the aftermaths of Boyd’s death and of the mumbo jumbo about Scott as a “pure Alpha.” It decides to deal with exactly zero of that to take a rushed detour into the Beacon Hills’ bloodied history. There is a great discussion, though I can’t quite find it now, about how flashbacks, because they naturally detract from the story, must meaningfully and directly inform the story. How then, can Teen Wolf justify an extended, convoluted flashback that doesn’t pick up any character thread and doesn’t lend any understanding or clarity to the overarching plot?

 I know I know, there’s Scott’s pair of yellow eyes meaning he hasn’t offed anybody, and there’s Derek’s dyeing his eyes blue by the act of killing his girlfriend that could conceivably have been continuation on the “pure Alpha” thing, but Teen Wolf didn’t choose that to be the theme of the episode. In fact as I will make the case for later, this episode is a thematic mess and held together by two pounds of duct tape. Anyway “Visionary” could theoretically have drawn a parallel between Derek and Scott’s love addled life decisions possibly forcing them to kill, but Scott has nothing to do this episode except to be an audience surrogate. Derek’s tragic back story number two also doesn’t care terribly for the eye color thing except as a bit of lore we have been clamoring for, because it’s focused on other stuff that I suspect will never play into the story again: Peter’s lying and Derek’s amazing, stupid, traumatic love. We already know Derek, Scott and Stiles shouldn’t trust Peter as far as they can throw him, and Derek’s new love interest doesn’t present the same dilemma as his old one because Jennifer Blake has already found out about werewolves. I know I know, last week the Alphas captured her as hostage, an instance of love ruining Derek’s life again, but last week Teen Wolf chose to dwell on Boyd’s out-of-nowhere, unnecessary death instead of her possible PTSD. Is it too much to ask for an episode that expands on Ms. Blake’s hesitation in being with Derek and Derek’s guilt in being with her, or about Scott’s refusal to kill to go between this week’s episode and the last?

To be fair, Teen Wolf, this season anyway, has been flippant at best with its emotional and philosophical tangents. Remember how Ms. Blake tries to convince Derek to just let everybody assume he’s dead? Scott finds out in the laziest way possible, so the entire exchange was irrelevant in addition to already being painful to watch. Speaking of “Motel California,” where did Scott’s I’m-no-one monologue come from anyway, werewolf drugs notwithstanding. Wait, even if werewolf drugs could logically explain Scott’s outburst, it still blindsided the viewers at home. If Scott had been so obsessed over Derek’s supposed death, he should have said something along the line of “I’m useless,” “I don’t know what to do” and “I can’t seem to escape this.” Have another example, last week there was a hold-your-horses moment where I was certain that the Alpha pack threatened Derek via Scott, so Isaac and Boyd went to provide Derek with backup but Scott didn’t realize they were under attack until much later? I can’t decide if the writing is dumb or if it’s Scott. Probably both, actually.

Considering the general ineptitude of the entire production, however, “Visionary” only becomes egregious in the light of it being a flashback episode and an incoherent mess of half formed ideas and half hearted drama.

“Visionary” begins with Stiles and Scott demanding Peter and Gerard, respectively, for answers about the Derek and the Alpha pack. It’s an incredibly weak framing device, as lacking personal investment, Scott and Stiles’ interest (doesn’t make sense unless Derek and Stiles had been having wild, enthusiastic sex off-screen, by the way) came out of the fucking ether. You know who has stakes? Chris Argent. Deucalion. Derek. Cora. There is a plethora of vastly more organic ways to go into flashback mode than having practically uninvested characters suddenly demanding to dig up painful dirt. Have Derek, Peter and Cora argue about it. Hell, just have the fucking flashback. But then Teen Wolf couldn’t tie the two stories together with the unreliable narrator thing.

Speaking of, why the unreliable narrator anyway?—because let’s count the ways in which it doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the episode. Wait, I forgot, nothing that happens in this episode is really related to the others. Both stories in it contain deception, but in Derek’s the deception starts early and culminates at the climax, the ending an inevitable conceit, and it is in nature a _seduction_ —Peter seduces Derek with the vision of a happy future with his love interest. In Deucalion’s story however, the deception begins and ends in abrupt brutality, in which Deucalion is betrayed by Gerard, a perfect stranger. Other random stuff that shouldn’t have made it in the final version of any show includes Derek’s aforementioned tragic back story, because doesn’t he already have one? And which part of this was foreshadowed anyway? It’s actually hilarious, because Stiles wants to know more about Derek, and Peter decides to tell a story that informs none of his characterization. In fact, if Peter were to truly paint Derek in the bad light he wishes, he would have spilled about Derek’s tryst with Kate Argent that led to the fucking fire that killed their family and that he didn’t have to make up anything about. Also in the random column: the bit about Derek’s mother being capable of full body transformation, the violin playing, etc., etc.

I’ve gone fantastically off track. My point is, I couldn’t for my life determine the theme of “Visionary” because it has too many of them but no unifying one. Is “Visionary” saying something about love? About the nature of the werewolf or the nature of the hunter or the nature of _the relationship between the werewolf and the hunter_? About unreliable narrators? About deception?

So the writer team can’t commit to just one theme in a 42-minute episode, which is par for the course for bad writing, but being unable to commit to a coherent story brings “Visionary” right back to English 101. Having two people narrate the same story is the worst idea ever if you haven’t got the chops to pull it off. _Is_ it one story, or two separate ones that, as established, have absolutely zero to do with each other and only suddenly, randomly, inexplicably, unnecessarily, confusingly converge? On top of it, Gerard doesn’t even narrate from his POV: in what universe, Jeff Davis, does it make sense for Gerard to tell his version of events from Deucalion’s perspective? _Which makes the unreliable narrator thing a decision even more baffling_.

Bringing this rant back to the roles of Scott and Stiles in this episode, because full circles, I like them: for the precise reason that they have little to none emotional investment in the actual subjects of the episode, the purpose of each story—merely to know more—is ill-defined. For all of running time I had no actual idea why anything happens, where the show is going with any of this stuff, why _I_ should be going along with them. Remember the most overused trope of all time, the quest? Yeah, there’s a reason why it is beloved by everyone on this planet after centuries of us telling the same story over and over: because clarity is the most underappreciated quality of storytelling, ever. It’s also indicative of the mentality of Teen Wolf, a.k.a., it really wants you to know more about these characters, there are these lovely headcanons the writers have for them, see? They don’t _fit_ into the plot, _per se_ , but just you watch us do something cool and ~~ambitious~~ totally out of our abilities with them.

I watched “Visionary” right after mainlining all seven glorious hours of Generation Kill and there couldn’t have been a more apt contrast. Generation Kill has to juggle dozens of characters, who all dress the same by the way, and the haphazard events of real life which does not make good television and drama like, at all, and has to do that in the span of the equivalent of a half-season. It comes out blazing with an honest-to-goodness narrative, three-dimensional characters, all with—hallelujah—clear motivations, and thematic coherence re: Don’t pet a fucking burning dog. In the meanwhile Teen Wolf has the playgrounds all the kids in the yard green with envy of—a lore of its own invention, a.k.a., do whatever the fuck you need for drama; the high school supernatural settings, a.k.a., go nuts with any gamut of emotions, a.k.a., we’re not making any controversial statement over here, no sir—yet it complicates the problem for itself at every turn in this episode. I’m getting a vivid mental image of the show dressing up in Lolita black and cutting itself in the bathroom.

What I was desperately trying to get at in the last paragraph is I can’t believe the sheer level of self-sabotage in “Visionary.” I was tempted to summarize this rant with “I can’t even” or the more demure, noncommittal “I didn’t like it,” but then not wanting to conflate lack of enjoyment with systemic, flagrant, structural issues had been the driving force behind the conception of the rant anyway. Thus, ‘Why “Visionary” Is Really, Really Inept.’ (It means: 1, I’m not raining hate down on Teen Wolf, 2, look, love in spite of—not love because of—is really profound, okay, 3, “Visionary” is the worst thing I have voluntarily submitted myself to in a long while, though and 4, it worries me that Teen Wolf plans on doing Shake-fucking-speare.)

**Author's Note:**

> Discussion very welcome.


End file.
